Monday, August 20, 2012

Well, it's been another week, and things have been going well. It wasn't quite as exciting as last week, but there were still plenty of things that went on. I'm just gonna highlight a few things though for the interest of time. And it's hard to tell when things happened anymore anyway. All the days just kinda blend together now. Haha! So anyway, this last week while Elder Christensen and I are out streeting people, we walk by this small pub at about 7 or 8 at night. There was a table set up outside with 3 men and 1 woman, all between their late 40's to late 50's. They weren't wasted, but they had definitely been drinking. One of the men called out to us, and recommended the restaurant next door, thinking we were hopelessly lost tourists looking for some food. We ended up going over and starting up a conversation. That was probably one of the funniest conversations I've had all week. They were just drunk enough to be a little weird, but not so drunk that they didn't make sense. We found out that discussing religion with drunk people, while entertaining, doesn't really go anywhere very fast (hardly surprising), so after about 10 minutes or so we gave them some pass along cards and went our way.

Saturday the Atsugi Military base had a friendship festival thing, that's apparently only once a year. It was open base, so anyone with proof of residency could go on base. Elder Christensen and I went, hoping to meet up with one of our investigators. He ended up being a no show, but we went in anyway to see what we could see. It was a good thing we did, because we ended up finding a couple that had been stationed in Japan since March, and hadn't been to church since then. We ended up giving them the information about where the church was located, and they told us that they would start coming. So that was great. Other than that though, the friendship festival was essentially just a bunch of stands selling the same food lined up around a field on the base, and a stage with a concert set up on the far end of the field. It was really wierd after a month of being surrounded by Japanese people to go on base and see americans all over the place and hear random english conversations again. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like after two years of being surrounded by Japanese people.

Later that same Saturday, the Yamato Ward had a summer festival. The military branch was invited to attend, but only a few families from the military branch actually came, which is unfortunate because it was really fun. We had Okinawa Taco Rice, Shaved Ice, and some games and skits. Elder and Sister Harrison, the senior couple who work with the members on the base, brought a family with them, and Elder Christensen and I had an investigator that was able to come too. It was a great experience for sure. It was a great opportunity for everyone to relax a little and just get to socialize, and a good opportunity for our investigators to get to know some of the members a bit better.

Those are a couple of the highlights from this week! More to come later!